


Done

by prizewinningfruitcake



Series: Bitten [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Templar Carver Hawke, but - Freeform, but she's not really dead, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 11:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizewinningfruitcake/pseuds/prizewinningfruitcake
Summary: Grief, hard decisions, some less than friendly discussion





	Done

He came to Merrill first.

He expected her to cry, but she hasn’t so far. She sits on her bed with her hand on her chest where it’s been frozen for the last several minutes, eyes unfocused.

Carver wants to sit down with her, to lie down, to fold into her, to fuck her, to go back to yesterday when there was a bright side to being left here in this miserable city over this miserable summer.

There’s a soft stuttered sound coming from his nose and mouth. His eyes are hot and he wants to close them, but once he does he’ll crumble to pieces, he knows.

“Have you-” She speaks so softly, and he looks at the floor instead of her. “Have you… gone home?”

He tries to shake his head, but it’s like setting something heavy on an unstable shelf, and he buckles, his knees giving way and he barely feels them hit the dirt floor.

When Bethany died, there was no time, no room to sit in shock. No room to think. Now there’s nothing but time, endless days and a widening expanse in his chest, a cavern. A ruin.

She’s on the floor with him. Her arms wrap firm around his shoulders, and he grabs hold, balls up the fabric of her shirt in his fists. His knuckles are raw and stiff with dried blood because the first thing he could think to do was hit something. That’s the only thing he’s any good at.

It’s hot, the air heavy and oppressive. His face was wet already with sweat so now he can’t tell the difference. She rests her head on top of his, and he can hear her hiccuping sobs, but he isn’t certain if he’s crying at all.

He doesn’t know how long it is before she takes his face in her hands and turns him to look at her. His knees ache kneeling across from her, mirror images of each other.

“Are you sure he was telling you the truth?” she asks.

“Bartrand?”

His voice cracks, hoarse and brittle.

She nods. Her eyes are filling up with tears again, and he can’t look at her, so he holds her hand and focuses on that.

“Does it matter? What am I to do about it?”

He’s trapped, useless. She holds both his wrecked and throbbing hands in hers and kisses his knuckles. It hurts, but it’s real. She lets him lie with her in her bed and hardly says anything else before he drags himself upright and goes to tell his mother.

He comes to her first, after he’s decided.

“Carver, you- you can’t be serious.” Her voice shakes.

“It’s done,” he says. He can’t look at her.

“No,” she says. Like she can just reject it, like he’s not allowed. It’s what Mother said too, at first.

Her voice is low and full and round, the way it gets when she’s speaking really passionately, about magic or history. He loves that. He doesn’t want to hear it right now.

“No. There has to be another way.”

“What other way?” he says, too loudly, and they go around for the better part of an hour. She tells him what Templars do, and he tells her he knows. She gives him all the options he already knows he doesn’t have and he’s more and more tired, more numb with every explanation.

“You don’t understand,” he says, and his throat is sore from shouting. “There’s one thing I’ve ever been any good at, and there’s one way to make enough to live doing it.”

“So you’ll take it in stride, then, if it means someone will tell you you’re good at swinging a sword.”

She doesn’t raise her voice back at him. She says it cold and matter of fact, and that tears something on his insides that are already cut to ribbons, that he didn’t think could hurt any more.

“It’s done,” he says.

It’ll feel better, in a way, to leave after this. He’ll be done with it. He won’t have anyone left to disappoint.

“Then go,” she says, “if you’ve made up your mind.”

He has. He does.


End file.
